“No epoch has existed that did not feel itself, in the most eccentric sense, to be ‘modern’ and consider itself to be standing immediately before an abyss. The despairing, wide-awake consciousness, standing immersed in decisive crisis, is chronic in humanity. Every period appears to itself as unavoidably new. Every period appear to itself as unavoidably new. This ‘modernity’, however, is precisely that which is diverse just like the diverse aspects of and the same kaleidoscope.” Walter Benjamin, The Arcade Project, 1940